Just pre-ordered. Now the waiting. Are they targeting beginning of January or late January?

Does anyone know the "house sound" of Light Harmonics (da vinci dac)?

I don't think we can realistically compare the DAC's. The chipsets and topology are completely diffferent. I suppose you can read reviews on the Da Vinci and try to guess what they might try for. But that is a TOTL DAC and this is for the masses. The voicing could be completely different. The chipset they are using just came out a few months ago so it will be hard to compare it to anything. Only Resonessence has put out a product based on it so far (Concero HD and Concero HP).

Didn't I just explain that it is a second headphone out and not a true line out? If you want to play the semantics game, this has a built in preamp since you can use the variable line out with external monitors or a speaker amp.

Indeed I got a reply from Larry himself :
Your suggestion 'was' one of my design idea as well. But after few rounds of competition from other design ideas, this one didn't make it.
Because one major issue of this 'by-pass' is that Sabre direct output's 'output impedance' is not LOW enough so even when driving your
pre-amp directly, the interconnect cable's capacitance will dominate and work like the Low pass filter. When we working with 3.5mm to 2 RCA output
Y cable, we can't control the possible capacitance. So I would rather to let Geek Out's good output driver which have very low output impedance
and we could ignore much of the influence from interconnect cable.

Indeed I got a reply from Larry himself :
Your suggestion 'was' one of my design idea as well. But after few rounds of competition from other design ideas, this one didn't make it.
Because one major issue of this 'by-pass' is that Sabre direct output's 'output impedance' is not LOW enough so even when driving your
pre-amp directly, the interconnect cable's capacitance will dominate and work like the Low pass filter. When we working with 3.5mm to 2 RCA output
Y cable, we can't control the possible capacitance. So I would rather to let Geek Out's good output driver which have very low output impedance
and we could ignore much of the influence from interconnect cable.

Thanks a lot,

Larry

When Larry says: "this one didn't make it"....I feel pretty stupid in asking but is Larry saying that the "line out" feature was implemented or taken out?

I'm really hoping for a true line out and not just a headphone out that can be used as a line out.

When Larry says: "this one didn't make it"....I feel pretty stupid in asking but is Larry saying that the "line out" feature was implemented or taken out?

I'm really hoping for a true line out and not just a headphone out that can be used as a line out.

A fixed line out that bypasses the amplification stage is not included. As Larry explained this would have had serious interactions with the cables used. By putting it through the amplification stage, the cable interactions are basically removed. So you don't get this "pure line out" that a few people are obsessed with. What you get is a second headphone out with slightly higher output impedance that you can use as a variable line out. Many desktop DACs do this with no adverse effect.

A fixed line out that bypasses the amplification stage is not included. As Larry explained this would have had serious interactions with the cables used. By putting it through the amplification stage, the cable interactions are basically removed. So you don't get this "pure line out" that a few people are obsessed with. What you get is a second headphone out with slightly higher output impedance that you can use as a variable line out. Many desktop DACs do this with no adverse effect.

Thanks you for your reply. One more stupid question: what is the advantage of using the "high z" instead of "low z" as variable line out? Or does it matter?